MUSCLE CHURCH: Our Father, the Iron

A lot of experienced competitors, OG Iron Addicts or folks otherwise well-versed in the iron game might look at my sorry, cheap lycra wrist wraps and shout, "dude, seriously?!" And they'd be right! These things are terrible. They never really get clean, they warp the first time you use them and they were ripped coming out of the package. There's no defending them. At all. However, I've had these wraps for a decade...at least. When Harbinger made these motherfuckers they broke the mold and at least two or three times a week I unroll these sad things to go back into the iron jungle and do that the fuck I do. Now when I got serious about competing a few years ago I went and got some nice, fancy, STURDY wrist wraps that cost about thirty bucks and those are good too, but they aren't MINE. But maybe, just maybe...there is some dreaded OVERTHINKING going on! As long as I've been in this game I've noticed that when something works, you do it...

It's easy to get bogged down in the goal-setting, poundages and blood, sweat and tears on a blog about working out but funny things happen too. Maybe some of us old school blood and guts trainers don't always want to admit it but there is a lot of nonsense that goes on in the gym, and this is one such tale. For those that don't know me well, you will come to learn that I find myself in weird situations-often of my own doing! When I worked night shift I came to fall in love with overnight workouts. For about 4 solid years I was working a shift of something like 5pm-5am and on those rare nights off, I spent a few hours training. I am not a before-work trainer and sometimes after work on night shift was just too much for my brain to handle, so I always took advantage of my nights off to get a good long one in. My old gym, East Shore Athletic Club in Charleston, SC, had a 24 hour facility and it became my second home. I'd mop and take the trash out and clean up some n...